"Papua New Guinea" made the charts and a Hollywood soundtrack. After that, Future Sound of London signed to Virgin Records for ?200,000, so you might think the pressure is on. No chance. These two are determinedly staying out on the edge. This ain't just the future sound of London, but the future sound of music. And it starts with a 31 minute, instrumental head tune. David Davies tunes in.TWO people make up Future Sound of London. Their names are Gary Cobain and Brian Dougans, they're 26 and 28 and they come not from London but from Bedford and Glasgow. If their plans come off, it's a lot more than the future sound of London we're talking about. Not probably even just the future sound of electronic music. What's up for grabs here is music's very place in the modern world. For these boys are planning projects that envisage music as just one part of increasingly incredible audio-visual experiences. Some futuristic combination of Terminator 2's morphing special effects and Lawnmower Man's virtual reality sequences, united with electronic music deep enough to move the strongest emotions. Ambitious. But they are already well on their way."Papua New Guinea" made their name. And their bank balance. Not only did it lead to them signing to Virgin after a bidding war that included Sony, Arista and London Records, but Hollywood also got involved. Cool World is a part-animated thriller that never made theatrical release in Britain, going straight on to video earlier this year, but its inclusion of "Papua New Guinea" on its soundtrack has led to some very well-padded royalty cheques for FSOL. Enough to top up their profits, they reckon, to give them the business freedom to do whatever they want to artistically. So they say. And they have their new single on their side.

Brian Dougans:

"We could have done another "Papua New Guinea", we've got several tracks lying around with big ethnic vocals but that's too easy. It would be so easy to do that and do a dance track because we're very good at it but we want to question ourselves."

And so we have "Cascade"; 31 minutes and 50 seconds of vocal-less, life-affirming music and about as radio-friendly as the big new tune on Detroit's Underground Resistance label. It is though f**king brilliant. Intergalactic head music that strips it right down to the cranium, pours in the molten acid and sends you out the door with a suitcase and a one-way ticket to Saturn. Not though that this is any kind of hippie drivel. There are incredible breathing, sucking sounds in here that doesn't require an eighth of weed and a blowback to really appreciate. WALK into FSOL's Earthbeat studio and it's easy to see where Virgin's investment has gone. Stripped, wooden floorboards; monster flash mixing desk; banks of gadgetry; top of the range Apple Mac for sleeve graphics; black leather sofa and more space than some dance producers actually live in. It is sleek and powerful. But somewhat strangely, the focal point of all this is a TV monitor. In front of the mixing desk and set dead centre between the speakers it sits, playing, repeatedly, Koyaanisqatsi - a film without dialogue that (like the recent Baraka film) just screens shot after beautiful shot of life. From escalator riders to sausages coming through a machine, from speeded up clouds to shamanic dancing. Head TV. It's just after one in the afternoon, Brian is rolling a spliff and this Head TV runs on. In quick, simplistic pop terms, Brian is the studio whiz. Dressed blankly in T-shirt, skate trousers and Converse trainers, he's quiet and almost shy, pacing nervously back and forth across the studio while we wait for Gary. Maybe it's just the dope.

Brian Dougans:

"I'm totally stoned"

Interviewer:

Gary is almost the opposite. Flash, thrusting and garrulous. He sits, swiveling in the studio's only executive chair, the good-looking one with no shirt under his unbuttoned leather waistcoat and the words just spilling out of him.

Gary Cobain:

"Electronic music, is the most genuine music you can do because you have to go to hell and back to get something good enough. But I don't want to give the impression we're boffins in a studio 'cos we're not..."

Brian Dougans:

"I don't know, We're always here."

Interviewer:

And they go on to debate whether they're getting their personal lives back in balance or whether the music still dominates.

Brian Dougans:

"Even at home, you're still feverishly trying to tape the radio and TV."

Interviewer:

19 months ago, when we first really mentioned FSOL in Mixmag, they were scavengers in the underground. Gary had junked his electronics career and they were zooming around in the house and techno undergrowth, throwing up increasingly brilliant singles on the otherwise unremarkable Jumpin' And Pumpin' label. Rushing onwards and upwards, they had dumped their more politically ambitious Stakker project (responsible for the aching brilliance of the "Humanoid" hard techno anthem) and were recording under a whole slew of titles: FSOL, Smart Systems, Mental Cube, Indotribe and Yage. Only the first and last now survive: Yage being the creator of the recent and delicious Amorphous Androgynous album. Electronic and deep. It was Brian who turned Gary on to the depth of electronic music.

Gary Cobain:

"Brian changed my whole course, I was f**king around with tin pots and guitars and Brian was f**king around with extreme ambience. Realism. Realism that can reflect life and all its horrors."

Interviewer:

Gary was hooked. He realised how disturbing electronic music could be.

Gary Cobain:

"I think electronic music is the most life-changing music I've ever heard. It's a completely new form of music. With the new technology there are possibilities to make music that it's not been possible to make before. We're able to put emotions into electronics and that's what we need; depth in music."

Interviewer:

As a man who used to wear overcoats in summer and pour over his Joy Division and Dead Can Dance albums, it's not necessarily positive emotions he's talking about.

Gary Cobain:

"The new electronic music is a realism, it's not zippy music. It's quite a harsh thing."

Interviewer:

THEY may try to fight it but Future Sound Of London are a pretty obsessive, even nerdy, pair. Their recent guest show on London's Kiss FM featured not only all the latest sounds and pulses but also another signal. Computer code. They were simultaneously broadcasting machine code for tripped out Apple Mac computer graphics to go along with the music. Nor were they able to unwind on holiday, collecting samples on DAT to use on the forthcoming album. They can't help enthusing about the sonic distortions they managed to pick up while recording an Italian tour guide in some massive cave. They even take nerdish pride in their PO Box. "It's essential," reckons Gary and it's clear they read everything that comes through to them at EBV Organization, PO Box 1871, London W10 5ZL. They're not complete robots though. Hearing Gary ripping off about people lying on the floor in space suits would put a smile on anyone's face. And they clearly loved the bitter sweetness of Steve Wright playing "Papua New Guinea".

Gary Cobain:

"We want to release extreme music and go Top 40 with it."

Interviewer:

It's not going to be their "pop faces" that get them there though. As they say, they're no real part of any scene. They've not really been faces around MIDI Circus and they no longer feel so comfortable within the confines of the dancefloor's 4/4 beat.

Gary Cobain:

"I tried to go clubbing, but it didn't really interest me. I ended up one of those poseurs watching everyone else. The stuff I found had me throwing myself around my front room was weird beats, not a metronome."

Interviewer:

REALLY they're experimentalists. "Papua New Guinea" may have been one of the best dance tracks, perhaps, ever but in the great vastness of what they're trying to do, it was only one aspect of electronic music. And Future Sound Of London have definitely got big plans. And almost impossible standards.

Gary Cobain:

"We're experimentalists, and we close a field as soon as we open it. It's very dangerous and very experimental. We take risks."

Interviewer:

Risks like a five part single that is over half an hour long. Like the album they're promising for January. An album that is "extreme realism." That is "total, confrontational ambient space music - like an extreme case of percussion after 15 hot knives." Like their audio-visual plans for mini-documentaries to make them look "weird f**kers." Like their plans for a television revolution. And, they sort of jest, "The Great Audio-Visual Swindle."

And pushing techno creativity even further are the people behind these images: FSOL, the Future Sound of London. They were acid-house pioneers back in '88. Today, FSOL describe themselves as 'master editors'. They suck the sounds and images that we're all bombarded with into their machines. They mutate and retransmit them. Anything is up for grabs - street sounds can be turned into music, frames of television into art.

Gary Cobain:

The whole authorship of sounds changes. We carry on sound that we're receiving. I wasn't the girl screaming in the park, that wasn't me. There's a performance there - she did it; thanks a lot, I took it. Maybe that's why electronic music is around - if you look at the nature of the sounds that we collect, it's basically a very, very cheap way of making yourself look anything but the truth. It's a very clever way of making yourself look like the most cosmopolitan, traveled, interesting, multi-headed individual. We're masters of the machine, and that's all, and machines aren't just made with musical intentions in mind these days. There's machines made which are going to revolutionise television. And if the TV companies don't understand it, they don't have to play it, we'll do it exactly the way we've done it with radio: we'll go through small cable-TV stations and work the peripheries until they realise it and they become addicted to it and they have to have it. I judge it from the reactions we get. One of them is impotence - if you're becoming impotent then you've been listening to FSOL. We're just some weird illness that seems to be sweeping the country - it comes through TVs, it comes through radios and it comes through vinyl or art, or whatever. We've had stories about guys stopping midway through fornication. Now that sounds like a pretty good reaction to me, because twice I've heard so much about 'this is the perfect fornication music, baby,' you know. Sounds too ordinary to me, sounds like everybody does that, everybody makes the perfect f**king music. What, I mean we're not into f**king, you know. If we can make people impotent, we're doing something.

On the face of it Future Sound Of London are a promotional nightmare: they don't tour, they record under a series of bizarre soubriquets and now they are even suggesting that their main interests lie outside the world of pop music. But if it wasn't for their bizarre take on the pop world and their evermore cutting edge approach to their art, they would not receive half the acres of press space they do. Rob Manley, the group's long-standing A&R at Virgin, is the first to admit that the group has presented the label with a few problems.

Rob Manley (Virgin Records A&R man):

"The minute they signed to Virgin they became an experimental, electronic act and it's been an enormous challenge. They don't go onstage, you never see who buys their records, yet they get into the Top 40 every time and everyone namechecks their work. Sometimes it's frustrating that they don't go on stage but, if FSOL did play live, then it would have to be a massive project, like Zoo TV. It would cost us a fortune and we're not at that stage yet."

Interviewer:

The unique approach of the band's two members, Cobain and Brian Dougans, has led to a number of spin-off benefits for the label.

Rob Manley:

"They don't do things like anybody else, but they've acted like a magnet in bringing other groups to Virgin. And they do all of this without radio or TV exposure. It's mostly the print media which picks up on them."

Interviewer:

FSOL first blew into the music world in 1988, riding the final waves of acid house with the barnstorming track Humanoid, recorded under the name Stakker Humanoid and released on Streetsounds. After a number of years recording for several indie labels under a variety of names, the group adopted their current title, released the club hit Papua New Guinea and inked a deal with Virgin. They've since become one of today's most creative, imitated and revered groups working in the fields of electronic, ambient and club music. Now they're releasing their fourth full album, Dead Cities, although the real total could be as many as seven given their work under such names as Mental Cube, Amorphous Androgynous and Stakker Humanoid. But in Dead Cities they can feel confident that they have produced their best album to date and have set new standards in post-ambient, mid-Nineties electronic music. FSOL remain an odd couple. Cobain looks every inch the pop star, with coiffured hair, sharp suit, exposed belly and non-stop patter. Dougans offers a marked contrast, dressed in fatigues, sporting a shaved head and saying very little. Yet their working relationship has survived for almost a decade while they have continuously exploited and redefined the boundaries of new electronic music, working from their Dollis Hill sound fortress in north London - a studio strongroom packed with sound and graphics gear and a base they're clearly growing out of.

Rob Manley:

"The key to FSOL in the future is a building, a facility where they can work on lots of different projects. They need people working for them, because they're doing too much work now."

Interviewer:

Manley first became interested in the group when he heard Papua New Guinea spun in London's Milk Bar by DJ Dave Dorrell. They went on to be his first major signing to Virgin once he'd graduated to A&R from club promotions.

Rob Manley:

"They've expanded my mind as an A&R man by pushing me into different areas outside the house scene."

Interviewer:

And Manley is not alone in finding their approach stimulating. Indeed, FSOL attract so much attention because of their pioneering attitude to the sound, style and format of modern music, truly living up to their bold moniker. This becomes particularly apparent as plans for their ongoing "world tour" are unveiled. The group will not leave their studio but will broadcast live performances around the world to radio stations via ISDN, the digital technology that allows the transmission of high quality sound signals.

Gary Cobain:

"We get ISDN as tour support."

Interviewer:

In keeping with their mission to be original, the tour will not feature any old material. And, at this stage, it is unclear whether even Dead Cities will be played. FSOL, clearly, are a duo who steadfastly refuse to repeat themselves. The first "date" of the tour was a broadcast on John Peel's Radio One show last Saturday (26).

Alison Howe (Producer of the John Peel Show):

"It's special because they're broadcasting live from their studio. We've done broadcasts like this from our own studios in London's Maida Vale, but it's more exciting this way. The sound quality is excellent and I've always wanted to do this with FSOL because they're a band at the front of new technology. I imagine most electronic bands will be doing this quite soon."

Interviewer:

For a band who admit to being, in Cobain's words, "control freaks", it comes as no surprise to learn that they are also heavily involved in graphic and visual work, in partnership with their longtime collaborator Buggy G Riphead. As well as producing an hour-long special for MTV and music for the new PlayStation game Wipeout 2097, they've put together a 196-page book of Cad images to accompany a special edition of the album. And then there is their surreal website, the Electronic Brain, (http://raft.vmg.co.uk/fsol/), which contains a texture library for graphic artists to use. Future plans include becoming a "broadcasting system" whereby the duo can beam synchronised sound and images direct to individuals and groups of people all over the world to provide a complete FSOL experience. With the opportunities offered by new technology the duo are actively exploring new areas. They are increasingly becoming interested in film and they're already involved in book publishing. Their ambition is to become a multimedia facility with music just one part of their output.

Gary Cobain:

"There may not be a Future Sound Of London in a few years' time, It would be nice to be amorphous, androgynous again."

Interviewer:

But, from a record buying public's point of view, one would hope that isn't going to be the case.

They are called Future Sound Of London, not the Future Sight Of London. So don't expect to see the British techno duo on stage any time soon. Future Sound Of London, who recently released their third disc, Dead Cities, play only live shows in their studio and broadcast them over the radio.

Gary Cobain:

"Over the years there's been a lot of pressure on us to become the new Pink Floyd, to play big gatherings of people experiencing a rock 'n' roll scenario very much based around the eyes."

Interviewer:

His group is at the forefront of Europe's rapidly expanding ambient techno scene, along with The Orb, Orbital, and The Prodigy.

Gary Cobain:

"From FSOL's perspective, the eyes have begun to deceive the ears, We're more interested in the way the ears correlate to the heart. Let's cut out the obvious visualization of people on stage. After all, we'd only look like two guys with ironing boards. I do appreciate people like The Prodigy, who do it live very well."

Interviewer:

Cobain and co-conspirator Brian Dougans transmit their gigs around the world from their London studio, Earthbeat, using digital phone lines. Last year's brilliant disc ISDN features snippets from their early broadcasts. Cobain calls these performances "sonic radio plays."

Gary Cobain:

"Radio is not elitist, everybody's got one. That's why FSOL uses it. A live transmission of us playing music is just as boring as a rock 'n' roll gig on radio. So we combine elements from the history of radio, like stories and presenters. I'll do interviews on the radio before a gig, and some of the questions I'll answer straight, some through a voice processor. And for some, I just drop appropriate voice samples taken from films that can say more than I can. FSOL hook into the beauty of modern life by gathering samples from everyday life and working them into their beat-heavy soundscapes. You can live and work and collect sound at the same time. Everybody is a sampler. We all make music using samplers. People sit in front of the TV flicking through crap channels, and over two hours of constant flicking they make their own program. That's sampling."

Interviewer:

FSOL also enjoy working with video, but deliberately don't present themselves as the focal point of their band. In their stage-less world, pop stars would be a faceless bunch.

Gary Cobain:

"I want to create a world that has more feeling, emotion and experience than me. I'm 29; I've experienced a fairly linear life. It is possible these days to create art - let's call it work instead, I don't want to be a pompous bastard - that's deeper than just my own personal experiences. One of the prime ideas behind FSOL was to remove the things that unite the last couple of decades of music - ego, face, visualization of performance - and see if we can create something powerful without it."

Trudging through London's Dollis Hill neighborhood, the entrance to Future Sound Of London's Earthbeat Studios lies behind three aromatic garbage dumpsters. Pushing a buzzer marked "Earthbeat," you're quickly greeted by Gary Cobain, decked out in a sumptuous fur coat, and a smiling, elfin Brian Dougans, the pair resembling a scrawny Jekyll and a stout Hyde. Long the engimatic duo behind some of the most startling, unsettling electronic music, FSOL enjoy spinning contradictions and mysterious mindgames.

Gary Cobain:

"I don't want it to be easy. I've always loved music to be a mental exercise. We've placed definite psychological obstacles throughout the journey, little obstacles in the sonic soup that trip people up."

Interviewer:

Where Lifeforms shimmered with crystalline melodies, humid environments and atmospheric tranquility, Dead Cities is a dark, ethereal void. Screaming voices and swooshing water sounds saddle spastic drumming; angry Run-DMC rants collide with funky wah-wah guitars; babbling children surround luminous choirs and Ennio Morricone flute samples. FSOL's delirious imagery has its roots not in the future, but in the past.

Gary Cobain:

"We think that the visual aspects of music are beginning to deceive people now, it's been here a few decades. What we're interested in is the game you can play with ears, the ability to sit in your front room and start using your ears instead of just looking. It's like radio theater. If you want to experience our transmissions you don't come hear and watch us, we're not into the visual element. FSOL are about the ears."

Interviewer:

Since the early '90s FSOL have broadcasted their live ISDN transmissions all over Europe, such crusty organizations as the BBC handing over copious airtime to these unlikely radio stars. The performances have seen the pair perfect their cosmic radio goulash.

Gary Cobain:

"When we're broadcasting to a radio station, our attitude isn't one of two guys twiddling synth solos like Jean-Michel Jarre, that's not good radio. We don't have that kind of patronization of radio. We approach it like a live gig, but with areas that are heavily voice-controlled, bit's that we're flying in that we've composed like sound environments. We have all these weird philosophies bleeding in."

Interviewer:

Talking to Cobain, you don't know whether the thin man's verbose mileage is the stuff of genius, madness or utter tomfoolery. Having spoken with Cobain after Lifeforms, one thing's obvious now--he who was once paranoid, worried and suffering from skin disorders is now a calm, semi-rational human. So Dead Cities' multiple death references are especially contradictory when compared to the seemingly happy sound of Lifeforms.

Gary Cobain:

"Dead Cities isn't a negative album, it's a very positive album. There are no enemies on this album. I just view the whole history of music as up for grabs. Around Lifeforms we came to the conclusion that dance music had become a very lazy way of evaluating music, almost a set of rules based around the beat, the bass, and all these things. So we cut out the bass line and the beat and were just left with the sonics. We just cut the enemy out."

Interviewer:

But doesn't "cutting the enemy out" also mean pushing away a certain audience weaned on groups like FSOL?

Gary Cobain:

"There are a lot of boring c*nts in electronic music that have no ideas and are hiding behind the scene of anonymity. That's why we are not into the realm of electronic artists becoming rock 'n' roll stars. Rather than mass adoration, we'd rather get the right people into the music. The idea behind Dead Cities is almost about losing people rather than gaining them. I'm happy to lose the wrong kind of audience."

Over the years you have built up quite an aura of mystery around yourselves... Is that image cultivated?

Gary Cobain:

"I think mystery is very important. I kind of... I was brought up on music, as that was what music was about. It was about mystery and excitement and intrigue, and creating evocative images and stories, really -- so yeah, totally cultivated. I actually find that we're quite well sheltered - not that that's what we're trying to achieve - but I think because the world that we are portraying and projecting is actually quite satisfying, I think people don't actually really want the people behind it. I think people are actually getting quite used to the idea of creating a world, rather than just relying on face and ego, in a sense."

Interviewer:

You've been working together for several years now -- so how did F.S.O.L. come about?

Gary Cobain:

"Yeah, we've been around for 10 years I think, haven't we? I think it could be about 10 years. We met in Manchester and I was very much a failing electronics student. I think a lot of people bog us down with this kind of sophistication that somehow we're kind of very much into technology and futurism, which is kind of slightly true. Obviously we use the technology of the day, but we kind of incorporate it with very old stuff as well. But I failed as an electronics engineer, which is why I started doing this -- and Brian was... he wasn't failing but... I kind of clung onto him, and that's when it began really -- in '88 when we did "Stakker" and stuff before that."

Interviewer:

Were you called Future Sound Of London right from the beginning?

Gary Cobain:

"No. We were kind of - as we always have been - running away from ourselves, which means working under a glittering array of different names and faces... and trying to get the formula right, really. Trying to find, not a formula, but trying to find the right combination of skills and the right balance of ideas -- which meant working under different names, different styles of music, a whole host of things, really. Rather like (sort of) Bowie doing his folk albums and trying to get things correct, you know... always moving on almost, never sort of thinking 'Wow!! We're great! We're big! This is successful!!!'... always moving on, trying to find more, trying to dig deeper."

Interviewer:

Did each alter ego have its own distinct musical style?

Gary Cobain:

"Absolutely, yeah. I don't agree with this kind of, like, different alter egos doing the same stuff, you know. What's the point? Yeah... always playing with different styles, yeah... never really happy with what we do, I guess."

Interviewer:

Is F.S.O.L. the strongest of those personalities?

Gary Cobain:

"No, I guess it's become almost a carrier. By that I mean that in the current day and age where there are absolutely millions of pieces of art and music and literature and things coming out, it's very hard to make your stamp -- and it's almost like you need that corporate stamp of one identity. So I guess we kind of realised that, realised that if our ambitions for television and radio were going to be borne out, that we needed to actually have a carrier for that, we needed to get somewhere... Because ultimately we're using the music industry to kind of... we're playing out this kind of dual exercise of using the music industry to help us into other areas, which are television and radio. So we needed to kind of put a strong image across, so we needed to actually fixate on one name. We've incorporated all the different styles of those other names into F.S.O.L. Almost F.S.O.L. has become this means of just being an hour of madness. I think. The idea of our albums is you come in and you get used to the idea of being taken on a bit of a journey, you know."

Interviewer:

How far does the name fit what you do?

Gary Cobain:

"We kind of don't bear names very easily really, so the name is already ill-fitting, you know. I guess where we see ourselves is not as a band at all, so that name is already becoming slightly ill-fitting. We don't really intend to be that, which is why we're creating other logos around it such as Electronic Brain Violence, Electronic Brain... all these kind of things. Basically, by the time we've broken the broadcast system, it won't be F.S.O.L. because basically as a band -- although there's a lot of advantages to the access to the media we get, there's also disadvantages in the fact that there's a real lack of credibility to the fact that musicians or artists can and actually do work successfully in different medias, which is something that we're coming up against. Yes, we are getting access to radio and we're proving we can do it, but with that there is a slight disbelief: 'Hey! You're always going to be a musician, you know... so can you really do television?'. Well I think so, you know, because I think we're a new breed of artist that knows what we want to see on television, we know what we want to hear on radio -- and it's not happening. Nobody else is doing it, so why not?"

Interviewer:

The name does of course associate you with the city where you live... How important is it that you're based in London?

Gary Cobain:

"It was incredibly important -- 'was' being stressed heavily there. I think... Brian and I are now coming into our thirtieth years - it's kind of, we're coming to the point now where maybe the idea of a city in terms of a dwelling place is actually becoming less important to us. We're actually beginning for the first time to think of maybe moving out. The energy of it and the education that's available in a city was important to us - the kind of learning, constantly feeding, looking at everybody else, analyzing everybody else - that was an incredibly important part of making music and art for us. But actually I'm kind of more into the idea of hiding away and not actually drinking in that influence, actually just completely bearing out my own art within almost a different community where I'm not going to be hit with those influences. Maybe it's time to kind of move away from that, so maybe London is actually on the decline for me as a notion."

Interviewer:

Has that changing outlook influenced this album, 'Dead Cities'?

Gary Cobain:

"Absolutely. I mean I think 'Dead Cities' was very much more... the past year has been very much more external. By that I mean that we've actually been going out and experiencing London life or city life a lot more. Whereas before that, 'Lifeforms' was actually construed to be the opposite to that. Everybody at that point was very... everybody had to pretend all the time to be having fun. I was ramraided with it every day -- people saying how things were great out there and being very external in a way. So we kind of did the opposite of that around 'Lifeforms'. We said 'O.K., let's try and create interest within four walls, within the idea of communication, within the idea of broadcasting to radio, within the idea of creating worlds within literature and music and thought and actually within your own space'. Almost all the song titles on 'Lifeforms' were borne out of these four walls -- the idea that you could create and have meaningful exchanges and actually do good work, on yourself and with other people, within one room rather than out there. 'Dead Cities' is more... we've been living a lot more, I've been out there. But we've always been kind of obsessed with this kind of idea of things going into decline, you know. So it's kind of like we're always drawn to the splattered texture on the pavement or the building that's been knocked down, you know. So it's kind of that sort of stuff that's prompted 'Dead Cities' in a way, wandering round and taking that kind of photographic work."

Interviewer:

I'm surprised you find any time to go out and look at pavements and buildings. Don't you spend most of your time locked away in the studio working?

Gary Cobain:

"This is an incredible idea that everybody seems to have actually, and it's a question that comes up all the time: 'Do you ever have time to live?' or 'Do you ever stop working?'. I think we put a whole lot of life into our music. By that I mean I have to... we're never not working -- this is where the contradiction lies really, we're never not working. It means that I'm out there and I'm living and I'm working. By that I mean that I'm out there with video recorders or Brian's out there with cameras. We're always recording but we're kind of... we're living normally. We're doing everything that everybody else normally does, we're not always here. The idea of being within one workplace, in a way is part of this 'Dead Cities' thing. The idea that you don't have to be living in a city to be taking part in the way that commerce, art, literature, everything, operates. You can be outside of it now with the Web, with ISDN, with everything. You don't have to be here."

Interviewer:

Your music has two quite distinct moods -- aggressive and reflective. Is this a reflection of your own characters?

Gary Cobain:

"Brian's aggressive and I'm sad! We have this sort of thing in the studio that there's kind of two of us and I kind of speak for me, and I use the word 'I' quite a lot, and I kind of have to remember that I'm speaking for Brian because we're two entirely different people, really. We talk about the B/G hybrid which is me crossed with Brian, and it's kind of like a puddle in the middle of the floor. It doesn't really represent either of us and that's effectively what we've become, that's what I'm trying to be here."

Interviewer:

You seem very at home with all this technology. Do you think you're good at what you do?

Gary Cobain:

"I think we're very interesting. I don't actually know if we're any good. Sometimes I... I mean, obviously I see a hell of a lot of flaws in what we do. There are thousands of contradictions in everything I say... um... I think we're good only in comparison to the way that other people are using stuff. I think we're rubbish but, hell, there's a lot of other rubbish people out there too."

Interviewer:

Developments in hardware and software are obviously vital to what you do. Is it hard work just keeping up with the technology?

Gary Cobain:

"Yeah, I mean it's a fairly important part, keeping up. I suppose Brian spends a lot more time researching and working out the syntax of how to use technology than I do. I kind of, like, I come in after a heavy drinking weekend, and just kind of use what he's done in a way, sometimes. In fact I can be incredibly shallow -- almost just like injecting a different kind of side or a feeling into a syntax that Brian has spent time building up' you know. And in that way it's a very good partnership."

Interviewer:

Do you get excited by the ever increasing possibilities of all this equipment?

Gary Cobain:

"I'm a lazy old dog really, you know. I kind of... I would be using... I'm the guy that goes down the swimming pool and swims the same number of lengths each Sunday, and goes down the aisles of Safeway and gets the same products each week. I don't actually kind of go in there with fresh eyes and look for that exciting new product, in a way. In a way I'm kind of, like, incredibly redundant in that way. I kind of come in and I use the computer exactly the way that I've used it five to seven years ago. It's Brian really that pushes that stuff forward, he's kind of the innovator. I'm just kind of like some guy that kind of spills my soul out, and that's kind of like what my part is in that."

Interviewer:

Doesn't technology sometimes get in the way of musical inspiration and creativity?

Gary Cobain:

"Basically we believe that the human perception of creation is quite stultifying. It's actually better when you allow chance and abstracts to kind of collide in a new, interesting way. That's the area that we're interested in. I'm not really interested in imposing melody on a track... it's a very nice vision and we're all still very much obsessed with it -- the idea of 'Hey! I woke up and had a dream last night and what a tune, and it ended up being a million-seller', I'm not interested in that. In effect what I'm interested in providing music which is so beautiful, but has no story -- it has no fanciful, mythical kind of cartoon story that everybody can relate to. I mean, a couple of years ago for example, we found ourselves actually almost falling into that trap. Rather than admitting the truth about the way that we sample, we found ourselves saying things like "Hell, we had a week's holiday and we went down the Amazon and these birds we got... waking up one morning at 3AM, you know, we wandered through the trees and we got this incredible bird and it looked like a cross between a mammal and a...' and you find yourself just, like, forming these ludicrous stories about samples and it's just absolutely rooted in what we consider to be redundant about making music and art now."

Interviewer:

Sampling is obviously an important part of your music, and I see you've borrowed from artists as diverse as Run DMC and Vangelis on this album. Why did you choose to sample these?

Gary Cobain:

"Uh, they kind of just, like, fell into the web, man! And that's what it's all about -- we just see ourselves as a web and it's like... we kind of almost, like, accept the whole chance of it. It's kind of like we reach out and maybe I'll go and buy a record, or maybe whatever I come across, you know. It's kind of like whatever we do we try and make it productive. If I'm sitting down in front of the TV and it's, like, I'm not going to take this shit no more -- I don't just sit there and lap it up, I use it for me. It's like if the programme's no good, I can get a sound from it that I can use. I can make it good. It's like the new breed of artist. We just don't sit back and watch this entertainment stuff no more. We take part in it, we regurgitate it, you know. If I go out and buy a bad record, I've spent three quid so, hell, let me make something useful out of it. I'll get a little sample from it -- I don't have to like the music it comes from."

And now I believe, if those noises in the background are anything to go by, we are actually now connected to the Future Sound's studio somewhere in Northwest London. Gary are you there?... calling Gary Cobain.

Gary Cobain:

"I am indeed, yes."

Interviewer:

Oh great. Gary, thanks for doing this special live performance for us. Why is it that you prefer this ISDN way of doing things to the more traditional "get up on a stage and face the adoreing multitudes" approach?

Gary Cobain:

"I think for a number of reasons really. One of them, I guess is that we do have a sense of history. In a way we are bastard children of this generation, we are bridging over between this age and almost the mythology of the rock and roll years. I've kind of watched all of this stuff and I've been fed it over the years and quite frankly, I kind of believe it. I believe that Bowie was sensational. I believe that, you know, that Hendrix was a great performer and almost out of respect for that I don't feel really that Elecronica, what we do, in a way can express itself in the same way. I don't really want to emulate, I just want to move forward in a way and I think the best way is to almost use mechanisms that for us have become slightly dead. You know, I think radio is a very powerful medium and I think there is something within the permeatations of what we are playing with, you know, graphics, movies, music, 3D, transmissions, ISDN. I think that there is something within all this stuff that I just haven't hit yet and I just want to keep trying until I find it and I think it could be very very powerful."

Interviewer:

So is this stuff that you are planning to record in the future? I mean do you use these, sort of, ISDN things as like workshops for future albums?

Gary Cobain:

"Radio is really exciting for us because it enables us to be illegal really. All sounds from the wastebins of time is up for grabs. I think that the way that our records are released world wide now has almost lead us into the situation of being musicians where by we're being so clever with our samples that we're not sueable really. I mean that is the essence of it and I think that radio's quite nice because we can plunder. We can plunder the wastebins. We can plunder television and film and just not clear any of it. I mean that's just a really nice thing for us and it actually leads to some quite good work. In a way I think the role for FSOL as just collage artists is a powerful one, you know, rather than musicians. I never really set out to be a musician. I'm not a musician! I'm a collage artist and to a certain degree the ilegality of that is important. I would like to get back to that, you know."

Despite numerous offers, the boys tend to steer clear of remixes these days, principally as a result of their perfectionist approach.

Gary Cobain:

"At the one time, after the last album, we probably had about 100 grand's worth of mixes on the table. And the money part of us was like "Come on man why can't you just do it?" Everyone else manages to do it, but I think the point is that if we do a mix it should sound good enough to be a single in its own right, so we end up spending way too long getting amazing results. That's the only way I'd like to do a mix. We were doing Supergrass, [it's not me] because we love their stuff. We turned down all these other people, but the Supergrass album's brilliant. So I ended up getting too excited, felt too much in love with the track and we spent three weeks on it. At the end of it we did something eight-out-of-ten, almost brilliant, but I wanted it to be amazing, to blow people's heads off, not just come out and arouse a bit of interest, so we never actually delivered it. They probably thing we're just rude bastards."

Interviewer:

FSOL have put their name to a couple of dubious tracks in the past, among them Bryan Ferry's "I put a spell on you", and limp MOR tunesmiths Prefab Sprout's "If You Don't Love Me" but Gary avoids embarrassment by explaining, how they tackled this type of remix.

Gary Cobain:

It was easy then, because we hated the tracks we were working on, so we basically do what the f*** we wanted to them, no respect involved. With the Bryan Ferry track, for instance, the only thing we used from the original was the split from his headphones.

"We were very limited by dance music, 'cause we had much more of a musical taste,"

Interviewer:

...Says Gary Cobain, one half of the experimental electronicduo Future Sound of London, on the failure of one of his band's earlier directions.

Gary Cobain:

"There's a whole history out there, and we're fighting it, in a way. By that I mean the whole body of music in history, that's what we're trying to do - the best bits of it, right across the board."

Interviewer:

And that's the FSOL irony: yes, they're one of the most innovative acts in music these days, pushing the envelope of sound, music, and technology; and yet rooted underneath it all is a basic simplicity, along with a fundamental musical sense that spans all genres. The public first got wind of the band's curious sound in 1992, when a track called "Papua New Guinea," - a spiritual, transcending anthem based loosely upon Meat Beat Manifesto's "Radio Babylon" - broke genre barriers with its lush, airy vibratory intonations. Now, the framed platinum disc for this seminal song gleams sternly on one corner wall of Earthbeat Studios, creative home of most of FSOL's groundbreaking albums. There is an inscription declaring it to be the Best Something Or Other for the year it was released. At the right angle, you can see yourself mirrored in it. Cobain, however, sits under the studio's bright skylight, whose brilliance is dimmed by the murky mirrors surrounding it. And the time for reflection is appropriate, because with a new album called Dead Cities, FSOL has moved away from the floaty soundscapes and ambient textures of their previous work (the albums Accelerator, Lifeforms, and ISDN) to embrace a more eclectic mix. Random atmospheric samples and spectral pulses still blend and flow around every number, but each track has a personality of its own. Dead Cities opens with the manic distortion of "Herd Killing" and "We Have Explosive," then moves to enfold the operatic strains of "Everyone In the World Is Doing Something Without Me" and the classic tinklings of "My Kingdom." After the trancey tribal propulsions of "A State of Permanent Abyss" and "Glass," it shifts to the epic sounds of "Yage" (also the title of the band's film, to be released next year). The overall sensation is of transporting, of mind-numbing, cataleptic euphoria - an impressive achievement for music made with almost no organic instruments whatsoever. It's that simplicity thing.It wasn't always this way. Cobain initially met his partner, Scotsman Brian Dougans, in the mid-'80s at the university in Manchester, England, where they were both fast becoming failed electronics students. After forming a techno outfit called Stakker, which achieved modest success with a song called "Humanoid" in the U.K. before falling apart, Dougans and Cobain pooled their remaining equipment, moved to London, and started fresh.

Gary Cobain:

"We started to believe in the music again, which is really important,"

Interviewer:

Cobain recalls. Through the years, he and Dougans have worked under many different aliases: Amorphous Androgynous, Mental Cube, and Indo Tribe, to name a few. But it was the FSOL approach that clicked - the irony, the paradox of less is more. It's even rearing its head in the band's view of live performing these days. Although FSOL are considered pioneers in cutting-edge technology, they believe their music's live translation should not be at all futuristic. You won't see the two of them knob-twiddling onstage anytime soon. You can, however, experience FSOL live via transmissions from Earthbeat both on radio (they did ten dates in the United States in November) and television.

Gary Cobain:

"The concept, is rather than take the studio apart and stand like a couple of plonkers on the stage, we try to build up a notion of sending audio-visual entertainment around the world. That means that we can stay [at Earthbeat] and do it as a live transmission."

Interviewer:

Staying in one place, Cobain believes, simplifies the touring process - as opposed to the old-fashioned get-on-the-bus method.

Gary Cobain:

"With venues, you are suddenly lumbered with all the rules of rock and roll. There's a history of rock and roll that has been [about an] entertaining performance, which we're not interested in. It's not like I want to hide behind this faceless electronic bollocks thing, it's just that I think we're building up a world that's becoming preferable."

Interviewer:

And no, it's not that FSOL is becoming lazy. They really studied this approach, and came to a logical decision.

Broadcasting live from their North London studio via ISDN to the Mixmag Arena. FSOL have only done this once before to the, building in New York, so this is their UK "live" debut. How do you feel about "playing" Brighton?

Gary Cobain:

"I don't really have eyes. I don't know how I'm gonna feel-which is quite a nice feeling. For the next two years I'm going to analyse every reaction from everyone, and then make up my mind how I felt about it"

Gary Cobain:

What exactly are you going to be doing?

Gary Cobain:

"I guess it's a beginning of something we've shyed away from the last couple of years. Pumping audio-visual broadcasts into auditoriums. There'll be people mixing video live at the event and we're going to be performing live from the studio. We're going to have a teleconferencing unit so we can butt in and say things and watch the crowd. The entertainment is not us fiddling with buttons-the entertainment is going to be out there. Spatial freakout. It' going to be interesting.

"I think it was probably Tribal Gathering two years ago. We got caught in the traffic jam. I took some E in the traffic and just build up the importance of the whole festival in my mind. Every band was a disappointment after that. [pauses] That gonna sound dreadful. [Sound of devilish laughter from partner Brian Dougans in a background]

Interviewer:

Which crucial item would you advise people take to festivals with them?

Gary Cobain:

"Meditation mat. Or if you taking drugs, don't take those special variety peanuts-because they do your mouth in."

Future Sound of London have always done more than make music. Derek O'Sullivan speaks to them about their overall agenda which now encompasses their own label EBV.

Interviewer:

More than any of their contemporaries, FSOL have advanced their conceptual dream toward its logical conclusion, both by consistently flooding the market with mind-bending electronic music, and by furthering the generally half-baked world of audio-visual expression with stunning artwork and broadcast media experiments. The latest stage of the pair's creative empire comes in a shape of a record label Electronic Brain Violence established and run by themselves to field new talent to the masses. A worthy distraction from the ongoing process of recording the follow-up to their essential Dead Cities album. EBV is simultaneously an outlet for fresh music and catharic endeavor for FSOL's relentless sonic obsession.

The garrulous Gary Cobain, undisputed soundbite king, and knowingly subdued Brian Dougans are, as ever, holed up in their North London nerve centre Earthbeat: an intimidating encleve that houses what will, if they continue to unite and conquer, undoubtedly define future sounds. Surrounded by music gears and computers, the two seem relaxed, comfortably at home amid the electronic hum and constant stream of important sounding phone calls. So what happening gents?

Gary Cobain:

"At the moment its a glorious mess of running our own tracks through the mill and help people around us to gets their finished, as well as liasing with the growing number of people we've got signed, so it's becoming quite hectic."

Interviewer:

The process of getting the next album under way has involved a bizzare and interesting re-affirmation of the two members of FSOL's musical stance. A recently completed compilation, a precursor to the forthcoming album, is suitably odd. "A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind" is the snappy title of this offering, ably sumed by Cobain.

Gary Cobain:

"Mixing together all the elements from the past that appeal to us that we're amalgamating into the next album."

Interviewer:

Sounds mad. And it is. As Gary explains:

Gary Cobain:

"We've taken elements from the 60's and 70's,stuff you wouldn't traditionally call psychedelia, and drawn a line from that up to the present day. It probably won't be ever released; it's a mind f***g. It's basically got 60 tracks in an hour that we've f***ed with, turned them backwards, all sort of things. There's Jonathan King, The Byrds, loads of stuff. Some of the artists are going to find it highly objectionable but it's a great piece of work"

Interviewer:

The pair are reticent about revealing details of the next FSOL album, but hint towards it being much more song-based, structually. The heavily name-checked Barbra Streisand may reveal something about the direction they're moving in, but there's little room between Gary's cards and his chest.

Gary Cobain:

"It's a lot to do with what we've been listening to, but I'm not going to give away the idea of the next album, because I don't want anyone nicking it! No no one can nick it because the idea already exists out there and it's already forming. I see a lot of strands of what we're doing, and we're picking on those strands and pulling them together into something."

Interviewer:

For the time being though, there's more than enough going on to keep the boys interested, specifically in promoting EBV artists, the process of which is also helping their own musical progress.

Gary Cobain:

"Generally, the relationship with FSOL is that we're constantly trying to get the best out of all this sound that we're trying to process. Inherently we're frustrated because we can't possibly match all the shit that's going in. I want to, but the label means that I can satisfy certain lust in me."

Interviewer:

With an open agenda in terms of artists signed and genres covered, EBV is an attempt to promote challenging new music. The creative standards are high as you'd expect from FSOL, superior production values are a prerequisite. Other than that, there's the less tangible head compatibility. Cobain's insistence on being involved exclusively with whom he defines as the right people has undoubtedly paid off so far, so his autocratic self-assurance as a spotter of good sorts is difficult to question. The label has quickly grown from an ideal to a reality, and with purposefully hands-on approach, the pressure is steadily mounting as Gary explains:

Gary Cobain:

"It's enjoyable, but it's a responsibility putting people's records out. A responsibility I'm not fully living up to yet. I feel guilt, daily, that I'm not doing enough."

Interviewer:

The experience FSOL have gained over the years is something that's allowing them to direct the EBV roster away from obvious pitfalls, but the hands-on running of a label also means tackling those non-musical aspects in greater depth; a learning process for Gary.

Gary Cobain:

"It's more about sussing out the whole game, how it relates to retail and all that shit, although I'd rather be concentrating on putting out good records than entering into the ways of all that stuff for the first time."

Interviewer:

There are obvious benefits though, and the concept of collective consciousness and a chain of like minds is appealing.

Gary Cobain:

"We're trying to find the right bunch of heads to deal with us on every level, and we're still hunting for various members, I'd like to find a label manager so I don't have to do it all; somebody I can trust who can handle it. In a way it's nice-the people we're dealing with like the fact that we can help them and we're creative-but we've been through the mill. We've learn a lot. And we also vent a lot of our frustrations from over the years. Having your label means that you can say, "Look we're not happy with uncreative press kits, all the stuff that pissed us off. I don't care if that costs us money. It's our label, we'll do it right."

Interviewer:

What does it take to get on to EBV, then? What qualities do Gary and Brian look for in the artists, they bring on board?

Gary Cobain:

"The most important thing is that we're all friends. Dealing with us is pretty mad."

Interviewer:

As far as the kind of music EBV embraces goes, it's a long way from their own sound, but there are no real boundaries. The current line-up of signings tend toward live instrumentalist working with MIDI and technology, rather than the pure electronica and ambient flavours you might except. Gary outlines the selection process:

Gary Cobain:

"We're quite hard work, in that I don't think you can ever predict what we'll like. If Barbra Streisand came in now with a good track I'd sign, but at the same time I would also get into a piece of very good ambient music, which is maybe more as people would expect from us".

Interviewer:

The basic idea is to equip the artists with the means to produce and leave them to it, with relatively little intervention, allowing them the freedom to develop. There are no strangehold deals within EBV. Instead the artist are encouraged to become independent.

Gary Cobain:

"We basically give someone we like some money to set up a studio so they become self-sufficient, which is a big important point Self-sufficiency equals time, equals creativity, equals some day you'll have something, and we want it. That's the only stipulation. Anything we don't like, stuff you can go elsewhere with, that's cool, you know, we don't owe you, but please just bring everything you do back, what's all I really ask."

Leon Mar may already be familiar to FSOL fans for his remixes of "We have explosive". As Oil, he's been producing mangled techno-funk trip outs for EBV for some time now although he also figures in the drum'n'bass scene as Arcon2, with a bunch of tracks released on Reinforced. It wasn't until his style evolved into something less easy categorise though that FSOL becomes interested.

Gary Cobain:

"Leon's been self-suficient for years. As Oil he began to turn out stuff that we really thought was excellent, and after he wrote "Sleight of hand"-this mad, psychedelic funk thing mixed with good programming - I spent the next six months attempting to copy it".

Interviewer:

Electronic Brain Violence is the official expansion of FSOL's label EBV. On the other hand, the Headstone Lane press release declares it to be Extraordinary Beautiful Vagina or, alternative Euphoric Beatnik Vibes. Both of which kind of fit in with the man who is H.L. Simon Wells, one time guitarist with punk pranksters Snuff; yes the ones who gave us trash covers of Match of the Day, Shake'n'Vac and the Cadbury's Flake advert among others. He's been knocking around Earthbeat for ages, using the rehearsal room from time to time and generally larking about Dollis Hill.

Gary Cobain:

"The day I met Simon, "Gary begins", he thrust a flyer into my hand with that disarming grin and said "Come and check us out".

Interviewer:

The flyer was for Snuff's farewell show at the Kilburn National in 1992, and on arriving Cobain was amused by what he saw: a combination of power-punk sentiments and crowd pleasing tomfoolery. It transpired there was more to Well's talents.

Gary Cobain:

"Simon had a really good understanding of our music and a whole range of other stuff. He becomes interested of making music, but not music of any particular type, just music through an electronic medium".

Interviewer:

Big Mind Explosion is Richie, a multi-instrumentalist who drummed with 80s experimenters Dif-Juz and played guitar with Virgin signings, The Lilacs prior to his involvement with EBV. Tell us more: When did you start making music?

Richie:

"At 11, I pestered my mum and aunt to buy me an electric guitar. They both decided that using electricity was too dangerous and bought me a drum set instead. Bless 'em!"